Red Riding Hood Retell Literacy Center Activity

Create your own Red Riding Hood retelling activity with this free download for kindergarten.

This is how I created a Red Riding Hood retell activity to go in our retell center as a storytelling option for my kindergarten students.

Let me show you what’s in our set and give you the materials to make it happen in your classroom too.

It’s one of my favorite literacy centers and we usually introduce Red Riding Hood early in the fall.

It’s one of the first classic folk tales we focus on together and really work on talking about plot, setting, characters.

It is a foundational story for us and we love exploring how details in illustrations help add to the story, since James Marshall (in my favorite version of Red Riding Hood) has done a great job with adding to this story.

They read they act, they use lots of great vocabulary and are developing fantastic reading habits all while continuing to build their love of reading.

My kinders get to choose the book(s) they want to retell while they are at this literacy center. This one is usually a favorite.

What’s in my Red Riding Hood retell set

Here are the props I gathered rather inexpensively (and you can too) to bring the book alive once we knew it by heart.

I printed characters, laminated them and added popsicle sticks with strong packing tape.

To be honest, I’m not sure where the little finger puppet came from, but the other prop like things were little decor I had lying around and cheap floral filler to create “woods.” I just tried to use what I had on hand.

Hands down, my kinders preferred to use the printable masks.

How to make your own Red Riding Hood retell activity

If you plan to make this a year-long literacy center, I highly recommend that you read the Retell Literacy Center Directions for more details and making everything run smooth.

Because you can make this kindergarten activity yourself and once you and your students are hooked on retelling you’ll want to make this a year-long thing.

Here are the materials you’ll need… (may include affiliate book links to Amazon)

Materials

• Red Riding Hood Characters Printables (Free download)
• Red Riding Hood Masks (Free)
• Basket (optional)
• Red Riding Hood Book by James Marshall

What to do

Take your book copy and your character props and place them together. A container like an open basket, a book bin or a large Ziploc bag will work!

If you don’t want to create masks, then you’ll like the first characters printables link option to make stick puppets.

We liked to keep a blanket nearby these materials so that they could create a theater-like puppet stage to sit behind.

But all they need to do is have the book and the materials and use the props to tell as much as they can:

• about the story
• from the story
• with the story (following along)

Encourage kinders to use as many words from the text as they can remember. Someone can even take a turn as the narrator. Which, in kindergarten, is someone who just helps move the story along.

Conclusion

There you have it – how to make a Red Riding Hood retell activity for your class. I love that it doesn’t require much to get it done. {wink}

If you like this activity, check out this list of 20 more famous stories that are great for retelling in kindergarten. Most of them are just as simple to pull together and I’ve found all of the downloadable resources for you.

Other books that are great for retelling in kindergarten

• The Little Red Hen
• The Three Little Pigs
• Goldilocks and the Three Bears
• Cinderella